In the days leading up to the story I wrote on Bria Hartley, I looked up the stats of some of UConn's other top guards through the first eight games of their careers. Why eight games? Well, I think it gives a little more of a sample size than doing it after four, five, six or seven games and All-American Sue Bird's freshman season was limited to eight games so it made sense to do it now.

The numbers are pretty interesting especially how each one had either 25 or 26 assists through eight games.

Player Min FG-Att 3pt-Att FT-Att. Pts-Reb-Ast-Stl-TO
Sue Bird 160 16-41 6-19 3-4 41- 16- 25- 15-16
Bria Hartley 247 38-77 17-41 15-18 108- 23- 25- 11-15
Renee Montgomery 206 19-50 4-15 7-8 49- 14- 26- 15-20
Jen Rizzotti 271 30-73 8-23 28-41 96- 34- 26- 25-36
Diana Taurasi 160 22-46 11-29 17-21 72- 27- 25- 10-21

I think the numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt. Hartley's offensive numbers are superior in large part because she is being asked to do more on the offensive end of the floor. Still, looking at Hartley's first eight games in this way provides a perpective of what she is accomplishing. If one number jumps out at me, it is that Hartley has just 15 turnovers in 247 minutes. Now that I said that, don't be surprised if a five or six turnover game is in Hartley's immediate future since this is right up there with television announcers stating that so and so has made xx consecutive free throws as they proceed to clang a foul shot off the back rim.

Another little tid bit worth passing on is that two UConn freshmen have scored in double figures in each of the last five games. I went back through the UConn record book all the way back to the 1998-99 season (when Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Asjha Jones, Keirsten Walters and Tamika Williams were freshmen) and could not find a run of five straight games with more than one rookie with at least 10 points. The closest I saw was a four-game run with games against St. John's, Quinnipiac, Villanova and West Virginia during the 1998-99 season. The game by game box scores in the UConn media supplement go back to the 1997-98 season but something tells me if I waded through the boxes from the 1992-93 season, Jen Rizzotti and Jamelle Elliott may have topped that run of five straight games since they both ended their freshman season averaging double figures in scoring.

Here's a breakdown of those games
Nov. 26, 2010: UConn 86, Howard 25: Bria Hartley 16 points, Stefanie Dolson 13 points
Nov. 27, 2010: UConn 81, Lehigh 38: Hartley and Samarie Walker 11 points each
Nov. 28, 2010: UConn 81, LSU 51: Hartley 15 points, Dolson 11
Dec. 2, 2010: UConn 80, South Florida 54: Dolson 16 points, Hartley 13
Dec. 5, 2010 UConn 86, Sacred Heart 32: Hartley and Walker 11 points each